DPS asked to stop using sharpshooters in helicopters

This is the pickup suspected of carrying undocumented immigrants that was fired upon near La Joya.

This is the pickup suspected of carrying undocumented immigrants that was fired upon near La Joya.

Photo: Joel Martinez, McAllen Monitor

Photo: Joel Martinez, McAllen Monitor

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This is the pickup suspected of carrying undocumented immigrants that was fired upon near La Joya.

This is the pickup suspected of carrying undocumented immigrants that was fired upon near La Joya.

Photo: Joel Martinez, McAllen Monitor

DPS asked to stop using sharpshooters in helicopters

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The Hidalgo County district attorney on Wednesday asked the Texas Department of Public Safety to temporarily suspend its practice of using airborne sharpshooters to disable vehicles during pursuits.

Last week, two immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally were killed by a state trooper near the Mexican border when the agent opened fire from a DPS helicopter on a pickup that fled from police.

The truck was thought to be carrying a drug load but was instead packed with Guatemalan immigrants, officials said. Border Patrol agents detained seven immigrants at the scene and hours later caught the truck's 14-year-old suspected driver, but a mistake led to his release.

The shooting has brought scrutiny to the DPS policy that allows troopers in helicopters to shoot at moving vehicles. Civil rights organizations this week lambasted the shooting, and last week a nationally known use-of-force expert said he had never heard of a U.S. law enforcement agency with a similar policy. On Wednesday, the top prosecutor in the border county where the shooting took place weighed in on the controversy.

“I've asked DPS through the (Texas) Rangers to talk to the higher-ups about no more helicopter shootings until they review their procedures and policies,” Hidalgo County District Attorney René Guerra said. “And right now, I'd ask that anytime deadly force be used again, would be in a case of life or death.”

DPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon, but department officials said the fleeing truck posed a danger. Aggressive smugglers along the border put troopers' lives at risk, the DPS director has said, and created a need for heavily armed boats, more aircraft and trained marksmen in helicopters.

Marco Antonio Castro and Jose Leonardo Coj Cumar were killed as they huddled in the pickup's bed. The marksman in a DPS helicopter tried to disable the truck after it fled from a Texas Parks and Wildlife game warden.

Geoffrey Alpert, a professor at the University of South Carolina who has studied pursuits at police departments across the country, said last week that he was not aware of any other department that allowed its agents to shoot at vehicles from helicopters.

The trooper who shot and killed the two Guatemalans was put on administrative leave and will go before a grand jury, Guerra said, as is standard practice in most cases where police officers shoot and kill someone. The Texas Rangers are conducting the investigation.

“These cases go before grand jury,” Guerra said. “Ordinarily that would be the case, unless it would be wasteful to present a case to the grand jury where there's no possibility of any laws being violated.”

About four hours after the Oct. 25 pursuit, Border Patrol agents caught the suspected driver, a Mexican citizen, said Mike Cox, a spokesman for Texas Parks and Wildlife, which is investigating the pursuit. The teenager was turned over to the Rangers, but at some point he was released. He didn't appear at a hearing in an unrelated criminal case Tuesday, Cox said, and a warrant has been issued for his arrest.

“Since the suspected driver was not the subject of the Ranger investigation, the Rangers attempted to release the juvenile into the custody of Hidalgo County Juvenile Detention Center after explaining, on two separate occasions, the details concerning the nature of this case,” said Tom Vinger, a DPS spokesman. “The Hidalgo County Juvenile Detention Center refused to accept the suspected driver. With the legal time limit for detaining a juvenile approaching, Texas Rangers were left with no choice but to release the juvenile into the custody of his guardian.”

Ralph Ocon, the intake manager at the Judge Mario E. Ramirez Jr. Juvenile Justice Center, said his department didn't have enough information to take custody of the teen and was never contacted by the agency investigating him. The department was only told that he had been detained for evading arrest with a motor vehicle, and not that the teen was connected with the DPS shooting, Ocon said.

“Normally, the person who has taken the child in custody is supposed to notify the probation department,” he said. “He got released to the parents because there was a miscommunication.”

For now, the teen faces charges of evading arrest, but the district attorney could bring more charges, Cox said.

Smugglers often use young drivers to transport their loads, Guerra said.

“They're getting the juveniles to drive so they get away with nonprosecution, which is not true, because I'm going to prosecute everybody,” he said.

The 15-year-old driver of a van that flipped during a police pursuit in April, in nearby Palmview, faces murder charges in connection with nine immigrants who died in that wreck.

Castro and Coj Cumar were fathers in their 20s who paid thousands of dollars to be smuggled into the U.S., said Alba Caceres, the Guatemalan consul in McAllen. Caceres said survivors told her that the tarp covering them had blown to the side, and that troopers should have seen the truck had human cargo. DPS disputed that.

“According to our preliminary review and irrefutable evidence, the tarp did not blow off the back of the truck during the pursuit,” Vinger said in a statement.